Friday, November 16, 2012

The Superstar Dilemma

Sorry if it seems like I've been neglecting the blog lately. I've been incredibly busy for an unemployed slob.

I've been meaning to write this post for awhile. As daily fantasy sports continues to grow, the nature of the games offered evolve. As the markets expand, the contest sites respond to the growing player base in different ways.

Having played DFS for 6 years now, I've learned you have to adjust strategies when switching sites (or seasons). Let me try to tie all of these thoughts together:

I haven't played much NFL this year. But the little I have played hasn't been very successful. Why?

I played mostly large field tournaments on Fan Duel. While I put up some very good scores that cashed, I never hit that exceptional score needed to take the tourney down.

Now I won several large fields last season. Was I just unlucky this season? Was I a luckbox last year? Is this just normal variance? IMO, no it's not.

The tournaments are salary cap games. And the salary cap is very different from year to year.

This is the first year Fan Duel starting national media advertising. And the response to that was a huge influx of new players. On the surface this seems great - a whole bunch of dead money driving up the prize pools.

This is where the fly hits the ointment. Now that Fan Duel has all of the new players, it has to keep them interested & involved. To do that, they loosen up the salary cap to allow users to make a team of studs. Unfortunately, this sucks a lot of the skill out of the game.

Ask anyone who played there last season and they will agree it's much easier to fit under the cap this year. Which makes the tourneys much more lottery than ever before, especially when you're playing the largest entry pools.

I realize the DFS sites are a business. The easier they make the games, the more people will play. The more skill involved, the more hardcore ballers will spend. It seems at the moment the casual players are more valuable to the sites.

It's no coincidence that the most high stakes action takes place on Draftstreet. They have the lowest rake at high stakes, the most fluid pricing for salary caps, the option to play draft games and complex scoring tables. All of the big names in DFS right now are well represented there.

As for me, I'm still spending my time on sports betting model & planning a trip to Vegas. I reached the #1 ranking on Wagerminds, let's see if I can stay there.